Linking Universities with the Labour Market: The Statistical Aspects

Using statistics is an excellent way to assess universities’ connection with the labour market.

For instance, statistical indices can be used to investigate to what extent alumni have secured jobs after graduation, the salaries they earn and how much they consider their jobs related to their studies. Another interesting figure would reflect the number of graduates who have started their own company. All these figures could be compared to the demographic data of the investigated population, for example their age or gender. Here you can see examples of this kind of statistical indicators from the Yale College.

Regarding internships, statistics could be derived for the students’ overall satisfaction of the experience, satisfaction of the enterprises in where students did their internships, for the possibility that these enterprises would like to receive other students from the same institution in the future and other reasons. We also could determine the preferred industries for internships or the companies that hired students who completed an internship with the firm. For example, here you can see such indicators from the Harvard Business School’s internships.

In the context of promoting the spirit and knowledge of entrepreneurship within the university, we could derive statistics regarding students’ opinion on courses of entrepreneurship (overall satisfaction, professor effectiveness, etc). We might also track the evolution of the number of students attending these courses over academic years.

These are just a couple examples of how we can use statistics to track the employment status of university graduates. We also could create statistical measures regarding the impression and effectiveness of career-oriented events at a university, such as workshops, seminars and career days.